Original subtitles

Ever looked around at the limitless majesty of creation and wondered?

Wondered what all these forests, valleys, mountains and puddles are

actually for?

Wondered how many buildings were knocked down to make way for them and who

granted the planning permission?

Wondered about all the incredible yet musky animals we share our planet with?

What's up with them?

From pointless ants to long-necked horse monsters.

From repugnant wombats to beautiful elephants.

What do the creatures want?

And why do they refuse to tell us?

And then, of course, there's us.

Humanic kind.

Have you ever wondered how we got here?

Wondered where we're going?

Wondered about the biggest mystery of all? What is the meaning of life?

Well, I haven't. But others have.

For thousands of years, thinkers, artists, authors, and my Aunt Carol have

struggled to define humankind's purpose.

Is life's meaning a riddle that even can be answered?

And if so, should we listen or cover our ears to avoid spoilers?

In this landmark documentary special, I'll travel the globe to walk in slow

motion through picturesque locations, get up close to some of the most

significant molecules in existence, and meet a variety of academics, experts and

professional mammals to ask some of the most significant questions you can say

with a mouse.

Hello, who are you?

I'm Brian Cox, Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester.

Can I call you Brian or do you prefer Cox?

So join me, Philomena Conk, as I uncover the point of it all.

This is Conk Online!

Welcome to our universe.

A limitless expanse peppered with stars, planets and assorted space muck.

It's where you live.

In fact, you're somewhere in this photo.

But we don't know where, because the universe is so vast, we simply can't

make you out, even with your ears.

Gazing into this infinite tapestry makes us ask questions, not just about where

the ceiling's gone, but deep questions that strike at the very core of our

arseholes.

Questions like, how did it get here?

Who are you?

I'm Douglas Headley, and I teach the philosophy of religion at the University

of Cambridge.

So, why are we here?

You mean why human beings exist?

No, I mean, why are we here in... Is this near your house or something?

No. It took me 90 minutes to get here on the Piccadilly line.

There are countless theories about how the universe got here, and the earliest

one comes from the wacky world of religion.

This is the Good Old Testament, the first century in the Christian cinematic

universe. Jesus isn't in this one.

It's mainly about his bad-tempered dad, a man so mysterious we still only know

him by his stage name, God.

I'm going to go straight in at the deep end.

Is there a God?

Yes. Oh, that was quick.

Great.

Has anyone proved it?

No, except to their own satisfaction.

Does God have a brother called Simon?

No.

But they can't prove that either, so he might have.

The universe could have been created by Simon.

The Old Testament claims God, and or Simon, created our universe in just

seven days.

It sounds like a lot to achieve in such a short space of time. But unlike us,

God wasn't constantly interrupted by iPhone notifications.

God started by saying, let there be light, which makes sense because he

needed to be able to see what he was doing.

Then he divided light from dark, like I do when I'm doing a clothes wash.

Next, he created the firmament, whatever that is, and the oceans and the stars.

For his next trick, God filled the oceans with water animals, or fish, as

they're sometimes known, and the heavens with sky bees, or birds.

Then he infested the earth with insects, reptiles, mammals, and whatever category

of things slugs are.

And finally...

For his crowning achievement, he created perhaps the only thing worth

celebrating. Oh.

Here on the planet of Italy is the Sistine Chapel.

Inside it is an astonishing collection of images created by overachieving

painter-decorator Michael A.N. Gello.

This artwork took him four years to complete, ruining a perfectly good

ceiling in the process.

But whatever you think of it, what it depicts... is momentous, the moment God

created life by jizzing us out of his hands.

This image of the most significant finger-banging history has inspired

visitors to the Sistine Chapel for many centuries, and visitors to this replica

for less time than that.

It's perhaps the greatest masterpiece in all of art, but also the most annoying

to look at. When I gaze up at it, I'm struck by a sense of wonder, but mainly

by a crick in my neck.

When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, did he start on the floor and

then they flipped the building over?

Or was it always on the ceiling?

The painting was always on the ceiling.

It's quite high up, isn't it? Did Michelangelo use a really long brush or

did he have really long arms?

Well, he had to stand up on top of some scaffolding and bend his head backwards.

Wouldn't paint drip down into his eyes when he was doing it? I bet he was

blinking the whole time. Like that. He doesn't complain about that, but he must

have done.

However he did it, painting the Sistine Chapel must have been a great upper-body

workout. How strong were Michelangelo's arms? Like, if a mad priest had leapt on

his back while he was painting it, would he have been able to reach round and

pull him off?

Oh, yeah, I think so.

I think Michelangelo was quite muscular.

He must have been.

So he couldn't really yank him off. I think he could have done, yeah.

The man God's creating here is called Adam.

He's one half of the first celebrity couple, Adam and Eve, played here by

actors who happily signed a nudity waiver.

Of course, the real Adam and Eve wouldn't have had tattoos we'd have to

paint over or intimate piercings.

We'd have to ask them to take out and hand to our researcher for safekeeping.

We've pixelated the offensive parts of their bodies, a technology that wasn't

available in Old Testament times, which is why I can see everything, even though

I don't really want to.

Adam and Eve weren't just the first humans to exist, but the first humans to

disappoint their dad.

God had hidden the secret of knowledge inside a delicious-looking fruit and

then forbidden them to eat it for some fucking reason.

But eat it they did.

An early example of an apple product hastening the downfall of humankind.

This was the original sin, and ever since, all humans have been considered

sinful.

Sinners worry God might punish them, but what about you?

Well, I'm a sinner like anybody else.

No, I mean...

Should they worry about you punishing them?

Uh, no.

God realized he needed help keeping us sinful humans in check, and he knew just

who to call on.

This is Holy Moses, the most successful influencer of Old Testament times.

Very much the Mr.

Beast of his day.

One day God invited Moses to the top of Mount Sinai and handed him a set of

rules for life carved on stone tablets.

It was the world's first and heaviest press release.

God commanded Moses to spread this message far and wide, which must have

been annoying for Moses because he'd have to carry the tablets back down on

foot and probably didn't have room in his rucksack.

How many Ten Commandments were there? How many? You just named them ten.

So there were ten Ten Commandments.

There weren't 100 commandments. There were 10 commandments.

There were 10 commandments.

Yes. That's it.

These shouts and shalt nots are a set of terms and conditions for humankind.

All Christians had to agree to abide by them and also accept occasional

promotional messages from God on subjects that may interest them.

How did God manage to boil his terms and conditions down to just 10 points when

the iPhone end-user licence agreement is about 100 pages long?

Well, it just proves the point that God is God and so he's a lot more concise

than we are. Is it a legally binding contract?

It is a covenant, which is a covenant of love between God and God's people. No, I

meant the iPhone one.

In a bid to stay in God's good books, devout followers avoid sinful pleasures,

like lusting after sloths, during their lifetimes.

Not everyone thinks enjoying yourself is bad. Some people dedicate their lives to

hedonism. The sleaziest ism there is, apart from jism.

Entire cities have been built for hedonist pursuits.

Impressive, opulent cities like Swansea and Wales.

And also this place.

This is Las Vegas, Spanish for the Vegas.

With its culture of casinos, strip clubs and round-the-clock drinking, it's a

mecca for people who aren't going to Mecca.

Vegas is a shimmering visual metaphor for human indulgence, according to our

director, and too far away and expensive for us to film in, according to our

producer, who lost the argument.

Given its reputation, Las Vegas is also known as Sin City, which is short for

Cincinnati, or would be if that wasn't a different place altogether.

Many of the tourists who flock here each year hope that what happens in Vegas

stays in Vegas.

Maybe that's true, but on the other hand, God sees everything.

Even that thing my ex Sean used to do with his thumb.

Worse still, God doesn't just know about the sinful things you've done.

He also knows about the sinful things you're merely thinking of doing.

God knows everything we're thinking.

That's the data privacy nightmare, isn't it? Is there a way to opt out?

Not that I'm aware of. Could you put God off the scent by only thinking decoy

thoughts, like only thinking the opposite of what you actually think?

Would that work?

I don't think so.

No.

Because you're not just dealing with a God who is omniscient, knows everything,

you're also dealing with a God who is omnipotent, is all-powerful.

I'll be honest, this relationship with God throws up a lot of red flags.

He's watching us all the time.

He sets rules.

He's got a terrible temper.

He even thinks he's God.

Isn't he basically just a toxic narcissist?

If you follow God's rules religiously, you'll ascend to the kingdom of heaven,

which sounds great, although...

If you're old when you die, you might not want to be going up a lot of stairs.

In heaven, nobody has to work anymore.

The most that will be asked of you is doing the washing up.

But since all earthly appetites will have been sated, we can only be talking

about the odd mug.

The alternative to heaven is hell, a fiery pit of damnation and eternal

torment, which currently only has two stars on TripAdvisor.

This is quite a spiritual show.

Can I ask about...

Our souls.

Do we get judged for the cleanliness of our souls when we get to heaven?

I think we get judged by how we've acted in the world.

When we look into our souls, what do we find there?

Well, it depends on how far we're prepared to look into it. How far you

look up, yeah.

God's unforgiving nature means his believers try to stay in his good books

through a form of organised grovelling.

called worship.

Any fine praising God in this way gives them a purpose in life.

Socking up to the boss.

If God's up there looking down on us, why do we kneel when we pray?

Kneeling is the expression of a sense of awe and holiness.

Yeah, but what's the point in kneeling, though, all bent over? You know, it's

terrible acoustic.

Wouldn't it be better to stand up and shout a list of demands up to the sky?

God is not in the sky, literally.

Right. So where is he? Has he got an address?

God is present in all places and

all times.

What, even like in cupboards?

Well, you've raised a very important question here because one

way of thinking about the divine presence is

in terms of his knowledge.

So maybe God is not located in the cupboard, but he knows about

the state of affairs in the cupboard.

Sorry, is he in a cupboard or not?

Not everyone believes God is solely responsible for giving us life. Other

origin stories are available.

The man slowly moving towards you is unshaven Victorian genius Charles

Darwin. One day Darwin rode a beagle to the Galapagos Islands.

where an exotic tortoise gave him an idea in the form of a theory. A theory

that human bodies hadn't always been human bodies.

Why do we say our ancestors came in apes?

Our ancestors came... In apes.

Ah. They didn't come from apes. Apes and ourselves came from something else. A

chimp. Sort of, you know, it's not exactly like a chimp or a... modern ape

or ourselves.

Right. So we didn't come in and chimp?

No.

It's hard to believe we all mutated from monkey meat unless you consider all life

is basically the same at a microscopic level.

Lots of things are alive, from tiny microbes to bigger microbes.

Every life form is made of cells, like a prison, which is probably why existence

is so depressing.

It's a life sentence.

Just like the sentences I say in this programme about life.

Are cells worth having?

Well, without cells, we wouldn't be.

We're made up of trillions of cells. We all came from a single cell.

So they're really important to us.

Are my cells dividing and multiplying all the time, like even when I'm sitting

here now?

Since you've been sat there, you've had about a million cell divisions going on

in your body.

No wonder I feel so worn out all the time.

Cells couldn't multiply without this, the IKEA Instruction Manual for Life,

DNA.

DNA is tiny yet complex, like Tom Cruise.

It would take a typist over 50 years to type out the DNA sequence, which would

be stupid because she could just cut and paste it and go home.

I call her she because of unconscious bias, which is in my DNA and not my

fault. Have you heard of DNA?

Yes.

Do we all have DNA?

Or do some of us have D or A, but not both?

No, it's not D and A.

It's three letters, D-N-A.

Can you tell by looking at me whether I have DNA?

Well, I know you have DNA because you're a living organism and all life has DNA.

My mate Paul tried to create a new life form by inserting his DNA into a

grapefruit, but halfway through the experiment, the green grass had started

hitting him.

Why is... science so controversial sorry that that question

didn't follow from your story of the no it changed yeah one of life's biggest

mysteries is how it's possible for me to look both like my mother and my father

at the same time even though i've only got one face is it true the most

important thing we can do as humans is piss in our jeans

Pass on our genes.

Sorry? Sorry, it's pass on our genes.

Oh, right.

Is it true the most important thing we can do as a human is pass

on our genes?

Well, I don't know if it's the most important thing, but it is very

important because what it means is that you pass on your genes from you to...

Your child.

What if I don't want to pass on any of mine?

Then you don't have to. Right. How can I avoid it?

Well, you have to make love.

What, to avoid passing on my genes?

All living things reproduce, which means all living things procreate.

Dogs, lions, pigs, penguins, monkeys, shell monsters.

Elephants, horses, David and Victoria Beckham, and pigs again.

The female reproductive organs are largely hidden indoors for safekeeping

and are normally only visible behind some kind of paywall.

By contrast, the male genitals, or Mr Genitals, live on the outside of the

body, where they can be easily photographed and DMed to a potential

mate without consent.

So, which bit's the penis?

So, the penis is over here. It's this bit here.

Right. I'll talk quietly. I don't want to wake him.

This is a flaccid penis, so for sexual intercourse, it has to become erect.

So what happens then? What bit goes where?

So this penis needs to become erect, and then it will be put into vagina here

during intercourse, and he's going to ejaculate sperm through his penis and

then into the woman's vagina.

Christ.

I hope nothing like that ever happens to me.

The disappointingly flavoured soup that vomits from the penis contains millions

of plucky young tadpoles which swim their way up through the female pipework

towards an egg and then kamikaze into it like a tiny 9-11 happening up a lady.

This is where, incredibly, the miracle of life begins and the precise moment

that a woman's right to choose ends.

Nine months after conception...

The infant painlessly slides through the lady's front hole and out into the

world. It then slowly mutates from a baby into an actual human being.

But what exactly is a human being?

What percentage of people have a human body?

All humans have a human body.

What about people holding a cat?

Have they got a human body and a cat's body, or does it not work that way?

No, the two are completely separate.

The human is a human and the cat is a cat.

Human biology has existed almost as long as humans themselves, if not longer.

It involves a complex arrangement of skin and meat machines called organs.

Put these organs in a plastic bag and walk around a shoe shop with them and

you'd be arrested.

But put them in the right order and you've got a human body, an exquisitely

constructed machine that also farts on its crest.

Our organs are so gory, some people can't bear to see images like this. If

you're one of those sensitive viewers, look away five seconds ago.

Is the correct term for all this awful or gore, all this stuff?

This is called the intestine.

If you pulled an intestine out, how long would it be?

It would be many metres.

OK, but why are you pulling it out?

We wouldn't normally pull it out unless there was a disease process.

Right, so you don't know why it's happening?

No. All these slimy innards need a surrounding structure to stop them

slopping onto the floor for passers-by to slip on.

We wouldn't be upstanding citizens if it wasn't for this, the human skeleton of

Ghost Train fame.

It's incredible to think that there's one of these inside some of us.

Did you know only 40% of people have skeletons?

Where did you get this figure from?

It's true. I saw a video about it. You only find out if you've got a skeleton

after you die.

Some people are just solid meat.

You know Burt Lancaster, the actor?

He was solid meat, apparently, like a sausage.

Every human being has a skeleton. That figure is 100%. Did you know knees are

a con?

Why do you say that?

Apparently, if you walk everywhere without bending your legs, you can

prolong your life by about eight years.

I went running this morning.

How would I run without bending my knees? I'm not saying you didn't bend

your knees.

I'm just saying that if you didn't bend your knees, you could prolong your life

by eight years.

Although it does make stairs a problem, I'll grant you that.

The most important bit of the human body is up here, in the driver's compartment

of school.

Imprisoned within every skull is a creature we've enslaved to do our

thinking for us, a sort of smart cauliflower known as the brain.

So this is a brain.

This is a brain.

How many of these are in an average head?

We have one each.

Just the one? Just the one brain.

The brain doesn't just tackle complex tasks like blinking or making porridge.

It also handles trivial things like our entire human consciousness.

the origins of which are a complete mystery.

Does the brain generate the consciousness, or does the consciousness

operate the brain?

You'll find lots of disagreement about it. I'm sorry, and I'm supposed to

remind you to keep your answer coherent for our fuckwitted viewers.

It is a complicated question.

My view is that the brain generates.

But consciousness gives us the ability to do things that we wouldn't be able to

do if we weren't conscious.

Thank you.

And apparently I wasn't supposed to read that card aloud, so apologies to you at

home.

All of this leads to a fundamental human question. Who am I?

Not me, obviously. I'm on the telly, so people know who I am.

But who are you?

What are you doing here?

Is any of this?

Really happening.

When we have a thought like, if I picture a windmill, how real is that

windmill?

It's not real.

It's not real? It's in your mind.

Why did I picture a windmill, though? Is it a clue?

A clue to... Something.

I don't know. Depends what you are thinking about.

What's inside the windmill?

Depends what you are thinking about.

What if... Someone lives inside the windmill, and I'm not imagining them,

they're imagining me.

This is a very unusual way to think about how imagination works.

Imagination is a side effect of having a mind, and some believe it can be

enhanced with the use of mind-expanding drugs.

When hippies took mind-expanding drugs, how much wider do their minds get?

Did their skulls ever pop open?

Their skulls didn't pop open, but it meant that they were more open to ideas

and philosophies and concepts they might not have previously considered.

You know, when people talk about opening the third eye, that's what my mate Paul

calls the hole in the end of his penis.

Why would anyone want to widen that?

The use of psychopathic drugs in the 1960s also led popular figures to

contemplate more spiritual aspects to human existence.

When the Beatles dropped acid and went to India, did they actually go or was

that part of the trip?

No, they did actually go to India and they visited an ashram and they visited

gurus while they were out there. It changed the stuff they said, didn't it?

They said, all you need is love.

And then George Harrison said, all things must pass.

Those were spiritual messages, weren't they? So when Paul said he was simply

having a wonderful Christmas time, was there a deeper meaning there?

I don't know. There was a deeper message there, and that was a bit later that

Paul was having a wonderful Christmas time.

Yeah, my ex, Sean, sang that to me in bed once during an intimate moment.

Honestly, I went as dry as a cat's tongue.

Rock stars also popularise meditation as a way to clear the stresses of modern

life from the mind.

Do you have to sit down to meditate, or could I do it at the same time as

something else, like driving or operating heavy machinery?

Some people do, Buddhists, for example, do walking meditation, so you don't have

to sit down.

Does meditation help our souls relax?

Yes. Meditation does help our souls relax? Yes.

Yeah.

Let's take a moment to realign ourselves with our present reality together.

We're going to do a guided meditation now, so feel free to join in at home.

Close your eyes.

Slow your breathing.

Now, breathe in.

Sorry, breathe out.

Become aware of the rise and fall of your belly.

Feel the fabric of your clothes on your skin.

Why is it that particular material?

Was it sewn together by a child in a sweatshop?

Probably best not to think about that, actually.

Listen to my voice.

Why does it put a sort of echo effect on it?

I think it's so that when they show this footage of me, it sounds like these are

my thoughts echoing in my mind.

Well, we filmed that weeks ago.

Hang on, where am I now?

Hang on, that's me waking up and standing. That's not meant to happen.

Help! I'm still here!

Oh God, I've got separated from my own body. They said this might happen. Help!

Help!

Our apologies for that. We had a duplicate consciousness stuck on the

voiceover track. So we've had it shot and can shortly rejoin Kunk on Life.

Who's that walking through an awesome landscape recording a piece to camera?

It's your very own Philomena Kunk.

Featuring a vaguely realistic face, similar clothing, and a total lack of

mannerisms. But that's not all. Philomena also sprouts facial hair,

witnesses the crucifixion, and lays eggs.

Pop off her head, tip her over, and whoops-a-daisy, real blood.

And the fun doesn't end with mopping that up.

Philomena pilots her very own spacecraft, the USS Triceratops, with

her intergalactic friends, Captain Shitbees, Mrs. Benson, and Barnaby Nine.

Together, they tour the galaxy repairing black holes and mutilating cattle.

Philomena Kunkin Pals, available for all good retailers.

May contain pine nuts. Side effects include spontaneous combustion and

melancholy. Terms and conditions available on our website. Do not feed

after midnight. Remember to hydrate forever and ever. Amen.

Coming up on Con Con Life.

Meet a man facing oblivion on death row.

I ask a philosopher to probe our souls. Do philosophers spend a lot of time

thinking about our souls?

And I visit the Large Hadron Collider for some astro chat with Professor Brian

Cox.

What's a black hole?

A black hole?

Sorry, a hole of colour.

But first, let's... Let's take a sideways look at the suffocating

inevitability of death.

Death is the great leveller.

In life, you might have been a billionaire, supermodel, president and

king. But the moment you die, you start rotting like a sausage in a lay-by.

The big unknown is how you'll die.

You might die falling off a ladder, or a cliff, or into a lake full of knives.

You could be hit by a car or a bus or a tractor if you're rustic.

Maybe you're already dead and watching this from beyond the grave, which would

be a shame because you won't count towards the rating.

Statistically, which is more common, athlete's foot or death?

Death is infinitely more common. In fact, it is guaranteed for all of us.

How soon after death is it safe to resume your regular day-to-day

activities?

You can't resume your day-to-day activities.

Once you're dead, how would you? So you can't do anything? You can't even listen

to a podcast?

You can't listen to anything.

If you played a podcast to a corpse, would really none of it go in?

Absolutely nothing would go in.

One downside of our big brains is we're the only creatures who are aware that

death is inevitable.

Although if you line ten dogs in a row and shot them one by one, the dog on the

end would probably get the gist by about dog four.

Of course, it's easy to forget about death until it happens to you, at which

point your brain gets wiped anyway.

It wasn't like that in medieval times.

Back then, thanks to plagues, wars and a general undercurrent of violence, people

were casually familiar with death.

In fact, they got FOMO when they didn't die.

And this matey relationship with their own mortality was reflected up their

heart.

This is Bruegel's Triumph of Death.

which depicts an army of the undead violently laying waste to humankind in

scenes unlikely to be adapted into a Pixar movie.

It's terrifying to think that this actually happened.

Well, lucky Bruegel managed to capture this image before he too was captured by

the skeletons.

In fact, I'm surprised he could paint at all. My hands would have been shaking so

much I'd have had my own eye out with a brush.

What the fuck is this?

Well, it's a scene of imagination.

But it's not a scene that Bruegel would have actually witnessed.

I mean, but it could happen, couldn't it?

No, it couldn't happen.

Misinformation is getting self-sophisticated. It's terrifying.

For years, morbid art like this depicted an ominous figure dispatching human

souls with a scythe.

That's this man, the Grim Reaper.

Don't worry, I haven't gone mad. It only looks like there's no one there.

In fact, you won't be able to see the Grim Reaper at home unless you're going

to die within the next 24 hours.

What happens after death is the subject of huge debate.

Some think that after you die, you evolve into a ghost, a sort of low-tech

hologram made of haunted smoke.

Scientists say ghosts don't exist, even though they've been caught on camera

loads of times.

like in Poltergeist and Poltergeist 2 and the remake of Poltergeist. In fact,

ghosts have been caught on camera more often than scientists have.

So who's real now?

Shall we move on to more hardcore scientific stuff?

OK, so ghosts.

When a human body dies, which hole does the ghost come out of, north or south?

I don't regard ghosts as a hard scientific subject, I'm afraid.

Let me tell you something.

Don't dismiss it.

In 2021, my Aunt Carol got engaged to a man called Bob Collins.

But one day, he just vanished and cleared out a bank account.

And when she looked up the name Bob Collins, she discovered he'd died in

1958.

He'd been a ghost all along.

Could it not just have been someone impersonating Bob Collins? No, no, there

were photos of Bob Collins in 1958, and he looked totally different, which

proves he's disguised himself so she wouldn't know he was a ghost.

You can't explain it, can you? It's terrifying.

Isn't the easy answer that he doesn't look like him because it's a different

person altogether?

No, it's... It's a ghost.

Death, tragedy and suffering have always been part of human life. Struggling with

lives of ceaseless misery, people began to wonder whether any kind of God exists

at all.

But for centuries no one dared voice that suspicion in case God did exist and

smited them shitless.

But that was about to change. It's 1883 and German philosopher Friedrich

Nietzsche is hard at work in his study.

putting his thoughts on paper.

Don't worry, he can't hear me.

He's about to write one of the most contra...

He's

about to write one of the most controversial catchphrases in history.

Three little words by the name of God is dead.

Nietzsche said God is dead, didn't he?

And now he's dead himself.

Whose neck?

Did he name the killer before he died?

Nietzsche. No.

I think he thought that... ..people should realise that they had constructed

a god that actually wasn't doing them as much good as they thought and people

need to realise, not perhaps that he was dead, but that he hadn't existed.

So he's saying that we killed him?

In effect.

But I wasn't even born.

No, yeah.

Nietzsche can fuck off.

Can we be sure God didn't kill himself?

You know, because you never know what people are going through.

It's possible.

Nietzsche's proclamation that God was dead caused an intellectual firestorm.

as writers and thinkers debated the decline of religious authority in an

increasingly secularised world, 107 years before the release of unrelated

Belgian techno anthem, Pump Up The Jam.

Pump up the jam, pump it up, While your feet are thumping And the jam is pumping

Look ahead, the crowd is jumping Pump it up a little more Get the party going on

the dance floor See, cause that's where the party's at And you'll find out if

you do that I want a place to stay Get your booty on the floor tonight

Make my day I want a place to stay Get your booty on

the floor tonight Make my day

Make my day, make my day, make my day, make my day.

But if Nietzsche was right and God is dead, it means we've got no higher

entities judging our lifestyles, except the people from the flat upstairs.

It could create a terrifying moral vacuum in which people feel free to

behave atrociously.

like they did in the entertainment industry of the 1970s and the 80s and

the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and today.

Luckily, moral guidance was on hand, thanks to the world of literature.

There were a lot of influential Russian writers in the 19th century.

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Turnover and Pushkin. Who was best?

I like Pushkin.

Yeah? Yeah. What about Turnover?

Turnover is... What did he write?

Oh, I don't know. It seemed a little... The main influential Russian

writers were Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Turnover and Pushkin.

It's all right if you've not heard of him, it's fine. You shouldn't be

embarrassed. I hadn't heard of him either.

Yeah, no, no.

This is one of the literary world's greatest moral thinkers, Russian

novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, seen here enjoying himself at a party.

He wrote many books, still not read to this day, but his most celebrated work,

his absolute tour de France, his unopened masterpiece Crime and

Punishment. Crime and Punishment grapples with individual freedom, the

role of authority and the complexities of morality.

What would you give it out of ten?

I'd give it nine, I think. Nine. Yeah.

Nine.

Punishment hasn't changed much since Dostoevsky's day, although incredibly,

in some countries, if an offender's crime was really bad, the authorities

will actually cut their sentence short by killing them.

Capital punishment forces us to ask questions like, does it hurt?

Are tickets available?

And what's the view like from seat 6A?

And also other more profound moral questions.

Why do we say people are facing the electric chair when they've got their

backs to it?

Well, I think you're taking it too literally there. What we mean by facing

the electric chair is facing an inevitable death.

This is Waylon Jackalot IV.

In 2019, he skinned six people alive and was rewarded with his own Netflix

documentary and a guest spot on Death Row.

And I'm delighted to say he's joining us right now.

So, Waylon, you murdered six people.

Where did you get your ideas from?

It's kind of tough for me to dwell on.

All I can say is the Waylon Jackalope that killed those folks was a different

man to the one you see today.

So it wasn't you? You're innocent.

No, ma'am, I killed them.

Oh, thank God for that.

So, have you been on death row before, or is this your first time?

First time.

You're facing the electric chair.

Aren't you worried about what's going to happen?

I've made my peace with the Lord, but I'm ready to meet him.

Yeah, but aren't you scared it'll hurt? It's millions of volts.

My mate Paul says your liver fries and your kidneys pop and your bowels go into

reverse flow and shoot boiling shit up into your throat, which chokes you.

Apparently, it'd be genuinely more humane to just pay some of the other

inmates to hold you down and physically pull your head off.

Anyway, best of luck.

Actually, before you go, could you just do a quick promo thing for us into that

phone?

Could you say, watch me die on Con Con Life?

For TikTok, it's only short.

Watch me die.

On life.

On life.

There you go.

Wasn't hard, was it?

Why does the electric chair only do one person at a time?

Could you have an electric bench that does about seven in one go?

You probably could.

You definitely shouldn't. Would be quicker, though, and you can do them in

batteries. It would be quicker, but we'd have to accept that the death penalty

was a sensible and useful thing to do, and I don't accept that.

Electrocuting people isn't very eco-friendly, is it? Could we deem them

to death instead?

I'm sure there are other ways of administering the death penalty that

might be more eco-friendly.

I think the preference would be to not do it at all.

In a just and moral society... Is it better to kill one innocent person than

to save one innocent person?

It's never going to be better to kill an innocent person, I don't think.

Contemplating weighty, big-bummed life-and-death dilemmas in a godless

universe opens the door to nihilism and existentialism, two of the hardest-to

-spell concepts in philosophy.

So nihilism is the view that nothing, absolutely nothing, matters.

Why don't people mention they're nihilists on their dating profiles?

I went on a date with a bloke, and 20 minutes in, he said he was a nihilist,

and that because human existence is futile, there was no point continuing

with the date, and he left, and I had to pay. Was he a nihilist or just a prick?

Probably both.

Yeah, as I suspected.

Nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless.

And nothing is worth believing in except more nihilism.

Existentialism is the same as that, but using longer words.

Who's the most famous existentialist in history?

Probably Jean-Paul Sartre.

Right. See, I'd have said it was E.T.

This is the first celebrity existentialist. Parisian writer Jean

-Paul Sartre and Ringo.

Sartre saw things differently to everybody else, partly because of his

questioning mindset, but mainly because of those eyes.

I mean, seriously, you could probably see the back of his own ears with them,

or write two books at once.

That's why he was such a prolific author, writing book upon book,

outlining his existentialist theories, decades before the release of unrelated

Belgian techno-anthem, Pump Up The Jam.

Which you heard earlier.

Someone told me that cats... are a good example of something that lives like an

existentialist? A good life for an existentialist, if there is such a

thing, is a matter of creating your own goals and values and sincerely following

them. For example, my cat reacts to his environment rather than just being

dragged around by others.

How do you know cats aren't thinking about their existence?

They might be really anxious and when they say meow, they're expressing their

own pain like meow.

Well, cats have pain. They don't behave in a way that seems to suggest a level

of self-consciousness.

Cats lick their own bumholes, don't they? Are all existentialists supple

enough to do that?

No.

Being overwhelmed with existential angst is part of being human.

Some of the greatest artists in history have tried to express the agony of the

human condition, and so have ones who could only paint as badly as this.

This is Edvard Munch's The Scream, the first major existentialist statement to

later become an emoji.

What inspired Eddie Munch to paint this?

It was an experience he'd had walking with his friends.

But I've been on bridges, and you don't find me painting about it.

How come we can't hear him? Is he on mute?

No, it's nature that is screaming loudly, and we all could hear nature

screaming loudly.

So is this one of the few examples of a silent painting?

All paintings are silent. If Edvard Munch knew he wouldn't be able to hear

it, why didn't he wait till this bloke's mouth was closed before painting him?

It's just annoying.

I've noticed he's not moving either. Why is that?

Because he's rooted to the spot by the...

Deep emotion, he finds.

So it's a freeze frame of a painting.

It's a freeze frame of a mood.

Drew Barrymore dies at the start of this painting, doesn't she? Do you know if

they've got Scream 2 in this gallery as well?

Scream 2?

Yeah. I'm afraid I don't know Scream 2. But this was based on the film, wasn't

it?

I don't think he'd seen the film.

It's a painting of an experience he'd had, but not a physical experience, an

emotional and psychological experience.

We paint our souls.

Why do we paint our souls?

The more agonised and miserable the artwork, the more people like it. A no

-dead agonised artist is bigger than miserable redhead and own-ear vandal

Vincenzo van Beethoven Goff.

As you can see from this photograph... Van Gogh actually resembled a painting

in real life, making a career in art inevitable.

Several of his works, such as Sad Flowers, Scary Night and Woofie McPoker,

have fetched millions at auction.

£22,500,000 for the last time.

This is one of his most famous works, Wheatfield with Crows.

At first glance, it's a simple rural theme.

But look closer and you'll see it's actually very badly made.

Take these birds.

Apparently they're crows, but it's impossible to know because there's no

detail at all. Some are big, some are small, some have more wings than others.

Looking at this, it's hard to believe Van Gogh had actually even seen a crow

or a wheat field or even held a brush before.

Look at those strokes.

They're sloppy.

It's like he painted it wearing boxing gloves.

It's just not good enough. In fact, it's actively bad.

Van Gogh's life, and by extension our world, would have been improved if he'd

never painted anything.

Not even a bog door in a home for the blind.

Anyway, that's my view.

What do you think?

Of course, most people aren't miserable like Van Gogh.

They're miserable like themselves.

They simply don't have time to channel their pain into artistic expression

because they're too busy working, and work is something we all learn to barely

tolerate.

Ever since the earliest caveman went to work for the first cunt, people have

hated their jobs, partly because those jobs were awful.

For centuries, most jobs involved manual labour, like logging heavy coal around

and tilling the fields while someone sketched you for posterity.

But as our world gets more modern and full of old plastic and metal and stuff,

the nature of work has changed.

Now jobs are even worse, which contributes to an ever-growing sense of

hopelessness.

Humans have to work a lot, don't they? Can work ever be truly rewarding?

Yeah, I think so.

What, even for him?

All he does is hold a thick all day.

There's no way that's rewarding.

Or meaningful.

There's no skill involved.

We wouldn't even need a machine to replace him, just like a bracket and a

standard do.

Can't be fulfilling in the slightest.

He holds that stick more than he holds his loved one.

If you think of the things he's missed out on, just holding that fucking stick

like a slave.

You don't get that time back, you know.

Wasted his life.

Very echoey in here, isn't it?

Phil would have hated that.

Wouldn't he, Ian?

You're next.

Can we have a minute for Atmos, please?

Life itself can sometimes feel like a horrible burden from which there is no

escape. But luckily, help is at hand.

That's why I've come to leading streaming platform Streamberry.

Does he either help distract viewers from the bottomless misery of existence?

Here at Streamberry, we're passionate about providing our users with

entertainment that speaks to them on a personal level about their needs, not

just as a consumer, but as a mammal.

We monitor our viewers' emotional state at all times, and we've discovered most

of them are locked in a state of existential helplessness.

And I imagine you want to fix that.

Yes, that's why we launched a suite of programming aimed at viewers who have

given up all hope, which is 116% of them.

These shows are grouped together into genre brackets that help despairing

viewers locate content that really speaks to their mood. We're currently

seeing maximum growth in a category called standing on a ledge right now.

And what's that?

That's programming aimed at viewers standing on a ledge right now, usually

watching on their phone.

Naturally, we don't want them to jump. That would negatively affect engagement.

And what about the little ones? Is there anything for them?

Yes. Actually, one of our newest releases is a show aimed at kids,

standing on legend.

Wow. And I think we've got an exclusive preview of that right now.

Don't jump?

Why not?

Well... Sometimes we all feel like life's lost its meaning.

But jumping that sidewalk will need careful cleaning. And more to the point,

you just wouldn't survive. Let me list you some reasons for staying alive.

Uh, okay.

You'd miss out on nature and all of its wonder. Like puppies and kittens and

sunshine and thunder. Your parents would miss you in sorrow. They'd drown if you

glanced. from that legend went flat on the ground. Uh-huh.

Jumping so final, no chance of revision.

Most people who do jump, regret their decision.

To leave a great legacy, stay in

the game. It's your beats just leaving a dent and a stain.

You've convinced me life is worth it. I don't want to die.

Oh, be careful returning.

You don't want to slip. Oh, well, it's too late. Bye-bye.

Well, thanks, Jackie. That was really enlightening. And Streamberry seems

fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Great.

Brilliant. Thank you.

Yeah.

Diltacom. Will computers recode the meaning of life?

Will we ever be able to upload our souls to a computer?

I take a closer look at cloning. If you clone twins, do you get two copies of

one of them or one copy of both of them?

Brian Cox gives a scientific view of the firmament.

Isn't it a waste of energy leaving the stars on at night?

No. But first, time to contemplate our fate in a pitiless, godless universe.

With God dead and existential despair all the rage, it seemed humankind was

all alone in the universe.

We were back to square one, staring up at the night sky and wondering how it

got there. To find out, we'd have to reopen the biggest cold case of all

time.

The Bible had claimed the universe was God's creation, but now we knew that

that was a lie, we'd have to come up with a new implausible theory.

It's October 5th, 1923, and astronomer Edwin Hubble is about to make an

incredible discovery.

Peering through his telescope, he becomes the first human to observe a

Cepheid variable star in a galaxy beyond our own.

Hubble raced home to tell his wife, Grace, who had loyally supported him

throughout his career.

I've done it, he cried, but in his voice instead of mine. I've fundamentally

altered our concept of the universe.

Oh, darling, that's wonderful, she replied.

Her eyes shone with pride, and they embraced.

As they kissed hungrily, their excitement gave way to passion, and they

moved to the bedroom, hurriedly shedding their clothes.

Flesh pressed on flesh.

As they explored each other's bodies with carnal abandon.

Together they steadily built towards a crescendo of ecstasy, their faces

contorting with bliss.

And a mutual orgasm shuddered through their bodies.

There they lay, quietly entwined, exhausted yet resplendent in the warm

afterglow of their union.

And then Hubble mopped up the damp patch with his vest.

Hubble's discovery paved the way for a groundbreaking theory about how our

universe was formed.

A theory that still excites nerds to this day.

Why do people say the universe came out of a big bag?

I think you mean Big Bang.

A big bag that went bang?

No, no, just a big bang, no bag.

Has anyone ever claimed responsibility for the Big Bang?

It just happened.

So we're no nearer finding a culprit.

The Big Bang is a theory, and like all theories, no one understands it.

And if they come too close to working it out, they're assassinated by the CIA.

But if it did happen, the Big Bang filled the universe with matter.

This is an atom.

It's so tiny, you probably can't see it, even if you're watching in 4K. In fact,

it's so small, chances are I dropped it before we started filming.

You, me, and everything around us is made from these, apart from this coat,

which is 100% cashmere.

What's the point of atoms?

You know, do we really need them or could we just do without?

We do really need them because we are made of atoms. Everything in the world

is made of atoms. So without them, we wouldn't be here.

Are eyes made of atoms?

Yeah. Because my mate Paul did ketamine once and he said he started counting all

the atoms in his eyes.

Then he tried to eat a towel and he ended up in hospital.

Okay. Are my feet made of atoms?

Yes.

I mean, I could save you the bother by... Everything you say, all stuff, is

made of atoms.

Are thoughts made of atoms?

Well, no, thoughts are... Well, there you go, then. OK.

You might think nothing's smaller than atoms, but as usual, you'd be wrong.

Incredibly, atoms themselves are made of even smaller subatomic particles.

Scientists have spent literally decades attempting to explain why these are

interesting, to no avail.

Perhaps that's why deep underground near Geneva, they built a gigantic machine

called the Large Hadron Collider. It smashes subatomic particles together,

recreating the conditions of the Big Bang. And I'm actually walking into it

now, wearing a hard hat, in case a proton falls on me.

So this is...

This is the actual Large Hadron Colander. So am I right in thinking that

this might prove the existence of chakras within the human body?

No.

You're not interested in chakras?

No. In the same way I'm not interested in ghosts.

But my Aunt Carol, she can sense chakras in someone's body.

And she doesn't need any machines.

This could explode at any minute, couldn't it? No. How fast do the protons

in this thing go?

99.999999% the speed of light. Your sense of smell is faster, isn't it?

No.

Well, how come that when someone's frying bacon and you walk in the

kitchen, you can smell it straight away before you've even seen it?

Have you ever tried putting bacon in here?

No. Yeah, you should try it. You might make quantum bacon.

Would that make it more interesting? A little bit.

Why would it be more interesting?

Because what it's trying to do... I'm trying to help you out here.

I'm trying to make it even slightly more interesting than it is.

But what it did was it detected a thing called the Higgs particle.

Without the Higgs particle, you, me and everything else that we know of in the

universe, none of those things would exist.

In 2012, the megaboffins at CERN discovered something incredible.

The Higgs boson.

Because of its significance in explaining how our universe was made,

the Higgs boson is sometimes referred to as the God particle, but it could also

be called the Allah particle, because we can't show you any pictures of it.

No less an authority than the man I just spoke to claimed it was the biggest

scientific discovery in his lifetime.

I think this is the biggest scientific discovery in my lifetime.

And that it stood with the great scientific discoveries of all time.

And it stands with the great scientific discoveries of all time.

Can the Higgs boson rewind time?

No.

Can it tell when an earthquake's going to go off?

No. Can it make food spicier?

It's just a particle.

It's like saying, can an electron tell when an earthquake's going to go off?

Can it? No.

Subatomic particles, the tiniest things in existence, can simultaneously exist

in two different states at once, just like Liam Hemsworth, who's sexy and

boring. In other words, science moves in mysterious ways, just like God does,

which was awkward because scientists had decided God didn't exist.

So they invented a whole new kind of science, the science of things that

don't make scientific sense.

And to make it sound official, they gave it a clever name.

What is quantum physics?

Quantum physics, for quantum mechanics, is our best theory of how the world

works. It describes everything that we've observed other than gravity.

Do mirrors run on quantum physics?

Run? Yeah.

As in?

Well, according to quantum physics, mirrors shouldn't work. They're a

miracle.

That's not correct.

Quantum therionics proves there's infinite multiverses like in Marvel

films, doesn't it?

That's one interpretation of the theory.

How many infinite multiverses are there?

If there were an infinite number of multiverses, then the number of

multiverses would be infinite.

See, I think there's two.

Ours and the one in mirrors.

Mirrors are windows into other universes, aren't they?

No. My mate Paul says they run on quantum power, and that's why you can

see into an alternative dimension in which everything's the same as our

realm, but backwards.

What does Paul do?

Well, he worked in a tennis ball factory where he had to catch tennis balls, but

he was fired from that, and now he's unemployed.

Sorry, am I wasting your time?

Yeah.

By the end of the 20th century, science had tried to outdo religion by

explaining creation, unpicking the fabric of existence, and discovering the

God particle.

For its next trick, it tried to emulate God himself by creating life.

The first ever thing to be cloned was Dolly the Sheep, daughter of Dolly the

Other Sheep.

Dolly became the most famous sheep in history, although to be fair, that's a

low bar.

Of course, cloning raises awkward questions about our sense of identity.

If I get copied, am I still unique?

Or is the clone me more unique because it's a clone which is cooler?

What makes me me and you you and us us and we we?

But rather than being replaced by clones, it's more likely we'll be

replaced by something else we created.

Computers. which are becoming so clever they might one day outsmart their

masters.

Will a computer ever be clever enough to play chess?

Computers are already clever enough to play chess.

Really? This is chess we're talking about.

Yes. Years ago, computers overtook human beings at chess.

But do they know what other pieces do, like even the little horse ones?

Yeah.

But the horse ones move in random directions, don't they? There's no

pattern to it.

No, there is. They just move two in one direction and one in the other.

Oh, right. Did the computers work that out for us?

Not content with playing chess, computers are getting better at

emulating other, more human, less chess-like pursuits.

One of the first examples of AI was a piece of software called ELISA, which

stands for something.

Eliza simulated a psychiatrist.

It would ask you how you were feeling and respond to your reply.

But it was basic.

It couldn't do everything a psychiatrist can do.

It couldn't walk round the desk or overcharge you, start an affair with its

secretary, cook an omelette or go...

Today, AI is everywhere and all around us, in our homes and in our hands.

With digital assistants like Siri, Alexa and that Google one no one remembers.

Seriously, it might as well be called Cuthbert.

But when people talk about AI, most of them are thinking about generative AI

chatbots like this.

ChatGPT, which is so good at mimicking humans, we might as well fucking kill

ourselves. Or at least that's what it just told me.

People worry a lot about AI.

What about you?

You mean, am I worried about... No, I mean, should they worry about you?

I hope not. I hope not. I mean, people are worried about artificial

intelligence because they think maybe one day it will replace us human beings.

I'm a human being. Why should they be worried about me?

No, no, no. The letter U.

They're all vowels, aren't they? A-I-U. What does the U in AI stand for?

There isn't a U in AI.

So it's a secret, then, the computer's hidden it.

I'm more than machine, poor man.

More than a fusion of the two.

Of course, us humans aren't about to be slaughtered by the nightmarish robots of

science fiction.

We're about to be slaughtered by the nightmarish robots of real life.

Now as humans stand on a precipice at the edge of a cliff face, peering into a

bottomless abyss and wondering if there's a void underneath it, the

question of life's purpose seems more urgent than ever.

And even experts are confused.

Is there a point to human existence?

And if there is, what is it?

And when you're answering, bear in mind that if it's too long, we have to

overlay funny pet videos over part of the screen so viewers don't get bored.

Well, we want our lives to have meaning.

And the question is, is that meaning something that we

construct, which is what the German philosopher Nietzsche would say, or is

meaning something that we discover in the world?

Maybe that meaning is generated by God, or maybe that meaning just happens to

be part of the fabric of the universe.

Why are poos tapered at the end?

Are they that shape when they're inside us?

Or do our bums mould them into that shape?

Sorry, that's for the poo expert.

Although you're here, so do you fancy answering it? I don't think I know

enough about human biology to give you an accurate answer. Fair enough, yeah.

Throughout this landmark epic, which you have definitely enjoyed, my quest for

meaning has taken me around the world and into several buildings, downstairs,

and at one point onto a bouncy castle.

From religious ecstasy to nihilistic defecation, from great works of

literature to that awful fucking painting, humankind's quest for meaning

has never let up.

And now my work here is done.

I hope you found it illuminating.

Now it's time for me to find out the meaning of life in other worlds.

Goodbye.

Do authors sign their books at the end, like when you write a letter, like that

crime and punishment, the end, yours sincerely, Dostoevsky?

Seldom, I think.

Why does the human eye have a nerve connecting it directly to the anus? It

doesn't. It does, because when you pick your bum, you sort of go like that.

When the penis goes into a lady, why does it keep backing out and going back

in? Can't it just go in, get it done and leave?

Were our souls created during the Big Bang?

Depends what you mean by our souls.

You know what I mean by our souls.

It's a shame they only make semen, isn't it? If they made tomato soup, you could

share a nice mug of it in bed afterwards.

Is it harder to enter the kingdom of heaven since Brexit?

I don't think Brexit has anything to do with the kingdom of heaven, or hell for

that matter.

My mate Paul says if you look in a mirror for about an hour, it's possible

to trick your consciousness into thinking it's inside the other you.

And then you can run off before it can jump back out and get you.

He said he managed it once, but about a second after he started running, he

caught his balls on a door handle and ended up rolling around on the floor in

agony while his consciousness watched him from the mirror, pissing itself.

I don't think your consciousness can go inside a mirror.

Do worry about Paul.

I think he just hasn't found his role in society.

So you're in the big bang gang?

The Big Bang.

Gang. The Big Bang Gang. The Big Bang Gang. I think we're all in the Big Bang

Gang. Are we? Yeah. Could you say that down that lens there, please?

Yeah, I'm in the Big Bang Gang. You're in the Big Bang Gang. You're in the Big

Bang Gang.

We're all in the Big Bang Gang.